musings of what once was love
Where do I begin?
How do you tell a tale so weathered yet so fresh?
So foreign yet familiar.
Your palm that once warmed my thin fingers
-nails painted lime green, the very essence of the weird period between “girl” and “woman” that merits bizarre things of that nature-
is now frosted over like the windows of my first dorm room
or perhaps a Chick-fil-a lemonade, a secret indulgence of mine.
Not that you’d know such a nuance after ill-explained absence and the passage of time.
I can’t seem to coil my now-steadier
-nails shaped almost like talons sharpened by years of experience wanted or not-
hands around the mere idea of you anymore with the natural ease I once knew.
But apparently you suit the thought just fine.
My Instagram inbox floods with cheeky emojis and brimming emotion.
I’m scared that if I dare to poke it hard enough it’ll overflow,
dousing my entire feed and life, for that matter, in young love aged like fine wine.
Except I don’t think wine has this kind of burn.
Maybe whiskey? Or something uppity like cognac.
A dessert beverage downed with tender lips and a measured inhale…
Something that, without proper warning, could carry me away on the tendrils of “what if”.
Would I ever return?
Can you close Pandora’s box before it’s even opened?
I wish I could tell you how badly I wanted this exact story to unfold
4 or 5 years ago.
The girl I was then begets the woman I am now.
That was before, well…
Everything.
Before I was a participant in a life I barely recognize.
Before I was sucked dry by a man dribbling forbidden fruit and the right words into my hair on my mother’s bed.
Before I knew what the diagnoses of “generalized anxiety” or “clinical depression” truly meant.
Alas, I can’t really relate to you how badly that now-stranger wanted you to waltz back into her life like the Rhett Butler of every teen sweetheart’s suburban school day dreams.
You were always the lighthouse while I was a wayward siren, riding whitecaps just out of your beacon’s reach.
Always the main gatekeeper, while I constantly sought entry through backdoors and alleyways.
My darling, in the darkest hours of adolescent anguish, it was always you for me.
And that I can never forget.
But sometimes even the strongest of faith and heart must learn to do so.
Today, I am closing the fairy tale.
Today, I am freed.